The News

You may have noticed that @hivefest was on last week and I was there, so that has dominated my attention. Most of my votes went to people posting about it and I will feature some in this post.

You can see lots of posts from people who were there on the #hivefest tag. There are plenty of photos and some cool videos. More will appear later as some people are still on their travels.

It would be nice to think that the $HIVE price went up thanks to this event, but I suspect it is just a general market trend this week. We should still enjoy it as a better price tends to encourage more activity. I have no idea why the 'blue coin' goes up as they have no real development and it is not decentralised.

Friday Follows

I am featuring people I met in Split. Some I have seen many times before.

• @thedessertlinux from @dashpay gave a talk and I met up with him later. He is encouraging the Dash community to move to Hive rather than using corporate platforms. We should make them welcome if we want to see some real growth. Other projects could follow.
• I played pool with hotshot player and videographer @kesilgonzalez. He and @mynewlife have put out some cool videos.
• @jza is a dedicated crypto guy who came all the way from Mexico.
• @forkyishere came even further, from New Zealand!
• @techcoderx from Malaysia gave an interesting talk on his library that developers can use for simple login via Hive accounts. We need that to be easy and secure.
• @louis88 was taking lots of photos with his impressive camera. He and his brother @rivalzzz signed up the cafe @abisplit so that they could accept $HBD payments. This was via @thedistriator that gives customer cash-back.
• @bil.prag was another of the regular photographers.
• @ssekulji drives the Hive rally car and he gave me a fun outing in that. He is also an ex-drummer, so we could talk about that too.
• The @worldmappin team, including @detlev and @lizanomadsoul, were very active and gave out lots of hoodies.
• @akipponn is from Japan, but lives in Germany. I was talking to her about compiling a list of Japanese Hivers and I will do that soon.
• @zirochka made it from Ukraine with her family and I think some others came from there too. She mentioned that it was nice not to be worrying about air-raids for a few days. That gives you some real perspective.

There were around a hundred people there and I did not talk to everyone. We had every level of user from redfish to mega-whales and they all get on fine. There are some people with power on this platform who can be intimidating, but they would probably not turn up. We should not let them spoil our experience. Hive is social and we need to emphasise that more. People can value comments as much as votes.

I appreciate that many cannot get to these big events, but anyone can organise a local one. You just have to get some people together and cool things can happen.

Talking Points

One topic that came up in conversation was that Hive is spending a lot of money on various technical and promotional projects. I am not an expert on the economics, but some think we do not get good value from all of those. If someone is getting many $thousands from Hive then they have some responsibility to promote the platform and account for the expenditure.

This post about what goes out through @valueplan was enlightening. I am all for Hive doing good through projects like the boreholes organised by @mcsamm, but we need to see some sort of return. That could come in the form of new users who might actually buy some $HIVE and create valuable content. I know @mcsamm was signing people up, but some places he goes lack connectivity. The documentary he and @mynewlife made will help promote Hive. We do have a perceived imbalance between 'creators' and 'consumers'. We need more of the latter and not all of us have to be superstars. The joy of Hive is that both sides can earn.

I understand proposals a bit better thanks to this post. How you vote on proposals can have an influence and we want funds to go to worthy projects. You should also consider how you use your witness votes to support those who you see as adding value.

The End

I need to let my voting power recover a bit, but I wanted to support those who made it to Split. I usually try to keep it over 80% at the end of the day so that it can recover overnight to maximise my vote. My voting is mostly manual as I want to be sure of what I support.

I am back to my usual routine, but have come down with some bug. We have had instances of 'Fest Flu' before, but I have not heard of others suffering. It does not seem to be COVID in my case.

This year is fast running out, so I hope you are on target for your goals. We all need to have a goal of growing Hive if we want it to flourish.

Hive five!

The man behind:

@tenkminnows: Helping good Hivers level up @proofofbrian: A bot that checks for tag typos #BritList: A monthly list of Hivers in the UK